The computer lab of CPT (Carpenter Electronics) was brightly lit, and it was already more than ten o'clock in the evening, and there were still many people who had not returned.

Usually they work overtime until 9 o'clock in the evening, but now it has been extended to eleven or twelve o'clock. For workaholics like Seymour Clay, work is life, and the lab is home. Going to work or getting off work, it's the same for him. Most of Seymour's subordinates are similar to him, after all, people gather like in groups.

Originally, Alex was a free man, he came when he wanted and left when he wanted. Ever since he felt the pressure from IBM, he began to change his previous lazy habits and slowly ate and lived with Seymour. Alex, who exerted all his strength, not only impressed the others, but even Seymour was secretly frightened.

On this day, Alex was tinkering with a tin box that was larger than the palm of his hand. He was so focused that Seymour didn't know what to do when he walked up to him.

Seymour looked at the tin box a little strangely, it contained some circuit boards, motors, heads, and head locators. He secretly guessed that the circuit board should belong to the control module, which is used to control the motor work, the head and the head positioner movement.

As for what the other parts are used for, he can't understand it. He began to think that Alex was working on a disk drive, but they already had it, and it had been improved, and it was no longer as big as it had been. From the size of a wardrobe to the size of a cardboard box, the amount of data that can be stored has also increased exponentially.

"What the hell are you doing with this little thing?" Seymour finally asked.

Alex only then realized that the person standing next to him was Seymour, and he knew that there were people around him, but he didn't know who Lu Dao was. He replied, "It's the floppy disk drive I mentioned to you, didn't I let you reserve an interface when you wrote the operating system?" ”

"Floppy disk drives? What's the difference between this and the disk drive we already have? ”

"The difference is huge, strictly speaking, our one is called a hard drive, and it can't be moved at will. Floppy disk drives are different, and can be used as a medium when data interaction is required. ”

"Where is the data from the floppy disk drive? I only see the structure of reading and writing data, why don't I see your storage media? ”

Upon hearing this, Alex pulled out a card with a plastic case from a drawer. It is said that it is a card, but it is actually thicker and larger than a card. It looks like it should be 3 inches in size, or a bit bigger than that. The color of the plastic is dark blue, and on one side there are pieces of metal clamped to it.

"This is the medium on which the data is stored, and I call it a 'floppy disk'!"

Alex handed the floppy disk to Seymour, and then took out a floppy disk from the drawer, the floppy disk had a red outer shell and a label on it that read "Test Disk". He inserted the floppy disk into the floppy drive, then pressed a button on it, and heard the floppy drive squeak.

Seymour glanced at the floppy disk drive, which was not connected to the computer at this time, and of course nothing was displayed, so it should still be in the testing stage. He touched the blue floppy disk in his hand, looked at it carefully, and found that the plastic was wrapped in a black platter, which was supposed to be coated with magnetic material to show the color and luster. He also found a small square on it, which he could move with his hand.

"What is this little square for?" Seymour asked.

Alex took a look at it, and then explained: "This is used for write protection, opening the square hole is write protection, and at this time you can only read data, not write data." Closing the upper hole is to turn on write protection, and you can write data to it at this time. ”

Seymour had heard of such a feature for the first time, but he was smart enough to immediately understand how important this little thing was. He nodded and praised: "This write protection function is really good, it can prevent miswrite operations, and it can also protect some important data." ”

In fact, the structure of Alex's floppy disk drive is very simple, and some people have been using it for a long time, and they also use this disk to store data, and the head reads and writes data. IBM and CPT have already used similar methods to store data, which can be regarded as a type of disk drive.

It's just that their disk drives are too bulky, and they started out with a wardrobe size, and now they're about the size of a box. When exchanging data, it is very inconvenient, and it is often necessary to remove the disk inside and install it into another disk drive. Sometimes, for the sake of a little data, they have to make such a big move, and they are in trouble.

After seeing the floppy disk and the floppy disk drive, Seymour immediately understood how useful this thing was. In the future, when they want to interact with data, they no longer need to take apart the disk drive and take the disk media out of it.

"How much data can a floppy disk store?" Seymour is most concerned about this, in his opinion, such a small disk, should not be able to store much.

"It's a 3.5-inch floppy disk that can store 1.44M of data."

"What? How can you store so much data? ”

Seymour was stunned by Alex's words, knowing that a few years ago, a disk drive the size of a wardrobe could only store 10M of data. There are dozens of disks the size of records in it, but the palm-sized disk in front of him can store 1.44M of data, how can he not be surprised.

"Yes, in the beginning, I wasn't able to store that much data, and then I realized that I was wasting a lot of space when storing data. Just change the format in which it is stored, and you will be able to make use of that space. ”

Hearing this, Seymour immediately became interested, and he was always curious about this kind of technical question: "How did you do it?" Tell me about it. ”

"To achieve this effect, you first have to format the disk and divide it into several tracks, each of which is divided into several sectors, each of which can store 512 bytes."

Alex said as he took out a piece of paper, drew a circle on it, and continued: "We know that if a disk is round, then its magnetic tracks are also concentric circles. A track is about a few tenths of a millimeter wide, and data is stored on these tracks. ”

As soon as Seymour heard it, he understood that the disk after this formatting could indeed make great use of the disk's space. The record format they used to use wasted so much space because the head was too large.

"A floppy disk has 80 tracks, each with 18 sectors, and data can be stored on both sides. In this way, if you calculate, you can know that a floppy disk can store 1.44M of data. ”

"You're a genius! I was able to come up with such a solution. Our hard drive also needs to change the storage format. ”

After hearing this, Alex smiled and said, "Don't worry, I've already changed it." You've been focusing on writing the operating system, and I didn't want to bother you to say it. Now our computer hard disk is capable of storing about 500M. ”

"It's really good, with such a large storage space, I don't think IBM360 will be able to compete with us."

"That said, if their computers had been developed before we did, we would have been greatly impacted. But don't worry, I've got a killer plan in place. Floppy disks are just one of them, and I have more powerful ones. ”

Alex smiled mysteriously at him, and by looking at his expression, he knew that he had already made up his mind.

"If you have any other good things, take them out and see."

"No, this kind of thing can't be exposed at will, if IBM finds out and directly imitates it, our advantage will be gone."

"So secretive from me?" Seymour was dissatisfied, he didn't think Alex had anything good, but his curiosity had been stirred up and he couldn't suppress it.

Alex looked left and right, stood up and said, "Okay, you come with me, I've hidden the things." ”

Under his leadership, the two of them went to a storage room, which was used to store the parts needed for research and development. Alex opened the door, turned on the light and walked in. They walked through the shelves to a door, which had been locked. Alex pulled out a key and opened the door, revealing a small, unventilated room that had once been the residence of the storeroom's administrators.

Now this is Alex's secret R&D base, and no one knows what he's doing in it. He was the only one who had the key, and no one else could enter the room.

Under the blazing light, Alex pulled out a long strip of black plastic with various keys and a long black wire on it. In addition to this, there is something like a shuttle, which is also connected by a black line. The shuttle is also made of plastic, and it also has two buttons on it.

Seymour recognized the long thing at a glance, and he said, "Isn't this a keyboard, we already have a mechanical keyboard, there's no need to make a plastic keyboard." Isn't a mechanical keyboard more durable than a plastic keyboard? ”

Keyboards have a long history, as early as 1714, there began to be various forms of typewriters, and the earliest keyboards were used in those typewriters that were not yet technically mature. Early keyboards were fully mechanical, and if you type too fast, you might have problems with stuck keys. However, this problem has been well solved, and the computer uses this "QWERTY" keyboard.

"Of course, this keyboard is very different from the previous keyboard, you can see it when you look at it."

After hearing this, Seymour took a closer look and found some differences. This keyboard in Alex's hand is made up of 83 keys, and there are some special keyboards on top that Seymour has never seen before.

Seymour still shook his head and said, "No matter how the keyboard is modified, it can only be used to enter data, and they also have a keyboard." This is not much of an advantage for our computers. Or look at your other little thing, what can it be used for? ”

"It's called a 'mouse', and it's used to replace the cumbersome instructions on the keyboard and make it easier to operate the computer." Alex said, handing the mouse to Seymour.

"What's the use of the two buttons on the top and the ball on the bottom?"

Seymour took the mouse in his hand and fiddled with the gum ball exposed from the mouse's lower body with the other hand, wondering what it could be used for. In his opinion, it is enough to operate a computer with a keyboard, and adding an extra mouse not only wastes resources, but also complicates operations.